[Matty81]

I'm not all that worried about the bigger longer term deals in the next couple of years because we are going to need money to get to the cap floor with it going up so much, flames have about 40 mil committed next year. Sucks more for the players than it does for the flames.

Acknowledging Francis seems to guess at stuff and claim it is fact in the past...

If this is true my main concern is how atrocious our blueline will be next year and the long term outlook. Andersson, Weegar and a bunch of plugs and B and C prospects right now moving forward. It's almost an Oiler level back end and it takes half a decade or more to build a home grown strong blueline - the club has a big deficit at that position from a prospect perspective IMP.

Letting Valimaki walk we're left hoping one of the mid/late rounders like Poirier, Solovyov or Morin pan out to fill one of the four empty spots long run and will clearly need to bring back a good young blueline prospect in any Hanifin deal